Sunday, March 18, 2012

We spent 3 action-packed days with Ryan Neil. Focus was on species-specific information, with morning lectures and afternoon work.Had the chance to work on some world-class material, as you can see from the photos (which are just a small fraction of the pix taken!).Friday was a focus on Pines.Saturday the focus was on Junipers.

We had the opportunity to clean up this very old Rocky Mountain Juniper, collected by Randy Knight. The covered deadwood was cleaned of any remaining bark. The exposed deadwood was hosed and thoroughly scrubbed, to remove all dirt, prior to lime sulphur application.Ryan showed us several tricks for getting the most out of the lime sulphur treatment.Here is the tree, post-lime sulphur. Ryan seems happy with the result...we did good!

The deadwood on this RMJ is world-class, so needs to be treated with the utmost respect.

On Sunday we discussed and worked on other conifers, including Taxus Yew, and Spruce.

One of the other members of Ryan's Mirai East group had a very old Colorado Blue Spruce, which needed touchup with it's styling to raise the level of quality. These changes required some major branch bending.Here is the tree prior to any work.

Ryan and the owner agreed on the details of the work to be done, and Ryan went to work.

During work constant monitoring was necessary in certain areas of the tree where bending stresses could result in irrepairable damage.Ryan and Jim Doyle checking...

Ryan cleaning up some wire bits...

And the finished work...what a jaw-dropper tree!

Ryan will be back out to help the study group in the Fall...can't wait!